Wireless communication devices, such as mobile phone handsets, typically incorporate a number of distinct and operably coupled sub-systems, in order to provide the wide variety of functions and operations that a complex wireless communication device needs to perform. Interfaces are defined for communicating between the respective sub-systems.
Such sub-systems may include radio frequency power amplification functions, radio frequency integrated circuits comprising radio frequency generation, amplification, filtering logic, etc. as well as baseband integrated circuits (BBIC) comprising audio circuits, encoding/decoding, (de)modulation functions, processing logic, etc. and memory units. Typically, the baseband integrated circuits are provided as one or more baseband modules that can be operably coupled to one or more RF modules in which the BB integrated circuit is implemented.
Wireless communication devices typically have to comply with a communication standard, such as for example one or more of those named Global System for Mobile communication (GSM), General Packet Radio Service (GPRS), Universal Mobile Telephone Service (UMTS) and others. Such standards inter alia prescribe the bandwidth for the data exchange between the baseband module and the RF module. However, on the one hand the requirements on this RF to BB interface are consistently increasing with new generations of protocols, thereby increasing the power consumption and the risk of radio frequency interference. Low power consumption and low interference are, on the other hand, typically required for the wireless communication devices. Thus, conflicting requirements are imposed.